


The Little Pig-Herdess

by TobermorianSass



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Religious Discussion, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-13
Updated: 2015-10-13
Packaged: 2018-04-26 05:28:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4992034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TobermorianSass/pseuds/TobermorianSass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helga Hufflepuff was not extraordinary, but she was not ordinary either. It is quite possible that she was chosen, as Joan of Arc was. It is quite possible that her chosen purpose was what made her extraordinary. In the end, it did not matter. What mattered was her legacy. What mattered was Hufflepuff: the house of the loyal, just and hardworking. What mattered was <em>people</em>.</p><p>This is the story of how a pig-herdess from Wales became a saint and went on to be one of magical Britain's most beloved figures.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Little Pig-Herdess

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SecondStarOnTheLeft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/gifts).



Once upon a time there lived a girl. She was not a very extraordinary girl - she was not excessively clever or cunning or brave, though she _was_ all three of these in equal but moderate measure. But on first glance, the thing that struck you most was how very much at home and part of the land she looked, like a solid rock in the middle of the roiling sea. Then again, she was the daughter of a people, on one side, who had been sons of this land since the dawn of time - and on the other, the daughter of a people who had learned to tame the seas to their will - so perhaps it was not so very surprising after all that she should look like a child of the land, a rock in the midst of a stormy sea.

On her fifth birthday, she saved her brother's pigs from a wild dog by wishing the dog would go away. The dog flickered out of existence. The village witch said she'd never seen anything like it, and wrote to a cousin in Cardiff, who in turn wrote to a friend in Grove Hollow who wrote to a friend in London and the young girl was soon bundled off to learn magic under a wizard of no mean repute. When she was done, her tutor advised her to stay in London, or at the very least swear herself to the Saxon king and give him her wand in service. She was, however, a child of her land and refused. And so, home she went and her tutor shook his head sadly and silently declared this young witch eternally lost to them. How could she be anything but lost, when she retreated to a tiny village in a lost corner in a valley in Wales?

The young witch did not tell her tutor that she meant to enter service of a very different sort.

Helga settled back easily into the life of a young pig-herdess and while people whispered, initially, they soon reconciled themselves to this and agreed that she was a sensible young girl to have gone to London and come back without any airs and graces. Only a rare woman would return to the unglamorous squalor the tiny village of Pen Rhionydd and herd her pigs without a murmur, without a single longing glance - such a humble girl and a sensible one. She remained _one_ of them; her years in London had not hardened her or made her proud. She still had kind words and kind deeds for the young children who often chased the pigs and made her work more difficult for her. She worked - like the rest of them - and it was almost as though she was no different from the rest of them, as though she had not once wished a Gwyllgi hound out of existence as a young child. Though of course, she soon became the village healer and the village thrived underneath her care and not a single person died from anything except old age and the Lord calling them home to him.

She went to church with the rest of them and sang hymns with the rest of them. Sometimes she looked thoughtfully at the church and would run her fingers over the lintels, then shake herself and return home with her family. Sometimes she would look at the poor old crone, the one who lived in a rickety old hut at the end of the village, with both compassion and thoughtfulness till her brother plucked on her elbow and told her she was worrying too much. They all agreed, in the end, that while young Helga remained in most things unchanged, she was thoughtful. Much too thoughtful, her mother said, because who would want to marry her now?

Young Helga did not tell her mother that she had ambitions that were greater than marriage.

In the grand scheme of things, after all, it was fairly unimportant.

* * *

Helga the Kind. Helga the Good. Helga the Gentle. In the kingdom of Glywysing, Helga the Brave. Her name spread far and wide, along with the stories of how she once made a Gwyllgi hound disappear as a child, how she once held an invading Saxon army at bay with the help of a handful of villagers, how she once fed all the poor in the kingdom of Glywysing and some of its neighbouring kingdoms, how she healed the sick and the dying, how she held out her hands to the rich and the poor and the good and the bad alike because every man deserved mercy.

There were other stories too, about how she had taken the Holy Book and translated it into the tongue of the common man; how she taught though she was neither a priest nor sworn directly to the service of God. How she said that the greatest gift that people could have was to learn for themselves and experience directly, the goodness of God. How she said that knowledge belonged to all and not a few, for no single man deserved or possessed such merit as to elevate him above his brothers and sisters and declare them unworthy of being taught, or else, not privy to the divine mysteries of God or even to the understanding of the gospels.

But still, she remained as thoughtful as ever.

* * *

It was as Helga the Brave, the young peasant girl witch, now by some perverse twist of fate, thrust to the head of a Welsh army and forced on to the battlefield, that she first met Godric.

He would be the youngest of the four of them. Wild and tempestuous and as untameable as the wild moor country he came from and unquenchably brave. Where she was brave because time and circumstances necessitated it, bravery was woven into the very fibre of his being - the way kindness and an ineffable love for humanity, weak and frail (and strong and wonderful) as it was, was woven into hers. He charged first into battle and was the last in a retreat and he was the first person to agree with her wholeheartedly.

She dreamt of a world that embraced everyone and did not draw lines of division between them. She dreamt of a world where the burnings stopped - and the wars and the sword could be laid down. Godric agreed. The sword would be beaten into the ploughshare one day. That was worth fighting for. The forests would no longer burn and they would not enslave the powerless. He agreed with her.

Only Godric was hard angles and fierce charisma. He stood and demanded that the world follow him and if the world did not follow him, then the world could go to hell. Helga, Helga saw no use in condemning the world to hell. Salt and light were meant to save, not condemn; to soften and bring light into the dark corners of the world.

Nevertheless, he was the first to agree to her vision and the first to agree that they would have to raise a generation of children to follow in their footsteps, to shape the world into a better and softer place. And friends who agreed on that point were so rare, she overlooked his hard angles.

That kind of burning, hard strength - idealism whetted and sharpened down to the knife edge of a sword - would soften with age, she was certain.

* * *

The forests had been burning even when she was a child.

She was only a young pig-herdess so she heard the tales without their fanciful dressings - the parlour stories that young men in castles told themselves and their kings to justify the fires sweeping through Europe - from the village gossips. There were elves, friends of men, who had once offered, in friendship, to help the magical people. But greed and malice tempted men and men proved weak against their flesh and so they took the friendship of these elves and demanded more. They should never have stolen them or forced them to give more than they were willing to give, the old gossips would mutter. It wasn’t right, her neighbour had told her mother, it wasn’t right to take more than what was given and it wasn’t right to go meddling with the forests and the fair folk. The fair folk would come after them and the fair folk would take their price.

Though, of course, the fair folk did not have iron beaten into swords and arrowheads and the forests had no fire to burn them with. All they could do was plague travellers who made the mistake of venturing through the forests after dark. Only a few rare warriors refused to take up arms against the forest people and the fair folk. Only a rare few, Helga supposed, had the courage to admit that a wrong had been done and had to be righted. And even those rare few who did admit it stumbled, as Godric did when he had his sword made for him. His bravery was his vanity – his only vanity and his only indulgence. In his later years he would regret the rashness of his actions and the rift it caused between them and the goblins. He would even come round to Helga’s way of thinking; that the doors of their churches were to be opened as sanctuary for creatures he did not call Christian. But it would be too late by then.

That was, she supposed, the difference between Hywel and him. Hywel was a warrior like Godric, but a warrior because his father had done it and his father before him. His heart lay with war as much as Helga’s own heart lay with war: it was a duty, a means by which to save the lives of those who could not defend themselves. But there was nothing to be gained by a show of force, not even in the pursuance of an ideal. Not where a matter could be solved in peace.

The difference, she supposed, was that Hywel viewed all the creatures of the world as God’s creations, while Godric applied the rigid measures of the Gospel to the world and was determined to sort the wheat from the chaff; the goats from the sheep; the left from the right. But Hywel -

Hywel understood and so Hywel helped her build a church.

* * *

Rowena was young and as filled with the idealistic impatience of youth as Godric was. But where Godric saw the world as a Gordian knot, to be solved by cleaving it neatly in half, Rowena saw the world as an intricate puzzle to be examined from every angle until a solution presented itself to her. Rowena could be patient, when she wanted to. But it was a question of _wanting_ and many times, Rowena did not want enough.

There were fools, plenty of fools, she told Helga, and only so many hours to waste upon fools.

Helga imagined that Rowena would not be so unkind and uncaring to extend such views to children, or to the other creatures of this world and she was not entirely wrong. Rowena agreed with her. The burning had to be stopped and the wars that were being fought were utterly foolish. Kings came and went, in her world view, and with their coming and going they disrupted the lives of people so utterly that there was no reason for people to sit down and dedicate themselves to anything but feigned obeisance. That was a sin, Rowena agreed. One mortal and fragile man had no right to dictate the lives of many. Children, children did not belong in wars or in the fields - not when there was so much that could be made of their lives, so many minds going to waste because of want, because not everyone could travel to London to learn.

She should have seen then, that Rowena, like Godric, would see only part of the picture she wished to paint for them. It was not wilful malice on their part; only that they were both so single-minded and driven by their two goals, knowledge and the pursuit of the knowledge of good and evil, that the rest of the world disappeared from their view.

Rowena, at least, understood that a school would have to be for children and for learning; no room for the battlefield or war to be forced on the young. Godric believed that it was necessary for children to learn how to draw their lines of battle before the world could sway them one way or the other. Rowena wanted her students to learn wisdom and exercise their mental faculties to the very fullest. Somewhere along the line, these admirable goals were inverted and twisted around so that the two of them picked the virtues first and children second: Rowena wanted only the wise and the keenly intelligent, Godric wanted only the very bravest.

Helga thought that neither of them need exist apart from the other. Children were too young to be as rigidly set in their ways as Godric and Rowena imagined. Children could be taught to think, taught to be brave. Children could be taught a great many things. Rowena and Godric, however, drew their lines in the sand and with all the stubbornness of youth refused to be moved and so half of Helga’s vision went to Godric and half went to Rowena. A quarter of their students would learn how to be citizens with strong moral backbones and the other quarter would learn and learn how to temper their knowledge with wisdom.

A lesser person; with a weaker spirit, perhaps, or someone who had no real passion for it might have given up on the school but Helga Hufflepuff soldiered on and set about mending the fractures and fissions that were already entering the school, even in the early stages of the building. Helga persevered and Helga fought with them, until they yielded; little by little. Helga fought tooth and nail for a school that would raise children with a sense of responsibility for their power and a love for all mankind. Helga prayed that the school would not flounder and turn to nothing. But above all Helga hoped.

Helga hoped, because Helga _always_ hoped.

* * *

The day Caradoc Miletianus came down from his castle to survey the lands that Helga and Hywel proposed to build a church upon would stay with both Hywel and Helga, but for very different reasons. He wore dark blue robes, that day, as dark as the robes Rowena favoured. He was a wise lord but he had grown weary of the cares of his lordship. He was gaunt and bent towards the earth and with dark shadows lingering in the hollows of his cheeks. There was not much the two of them had to do to convince him to lend them his land for this church. Indeed he was eager to do so, as though by building a church he could atone for the sins of his youth, or at the very least, free himself of dark memories that plagued him from a time when he was still young and fit for battle. They did not pry. Whatever this man's burden was, it was a matter between him and God, not for them as mortal humans who could see only the outside to judge.

When they had finished drawing up the plans and the foundations had been laid, Caradoc Miletianus retreated to his castle - thinner and more haggard than ever. He left the supervision of the building to his sons to divide among themselves. His eldest, Nisien would come and watch the work taking place on the church. He was a smart boy and gentle and he would ask Helga questions about the wards she was laying and the runes her friend Rowena was carving into the stones as they went up one by one. His brother Arawn was of a more demanding temperament and found the matter of building a church a bore, so abandoned it to spend his time swinging his sword at trees in mock battles until he heard the purpose for which the church was intended.

Nisien was a good man, wise for his age and gentle in spirit, fonder of old manuscripts and the arts than he was of the sword - one of her favourite students. Caradoc was far too old for the school, but Nisien had joined when he was thirteen summers and had been sorted into her house - to the anger of Rowena who had hoped to collect him for her own. A few years later his brother Arawn had followed him. He was a wild young boy with a temper to match Godric’s, yet had followed his brother into her house with a dogged loyalty that touched the other two (though Godric would mutter about mis-sortings) but worried Helga. Devotion like that, blind and tamed only by the gentleness of its subject’s temper, was apt to run wild and wicked if by some chance or twist of fate, something were to remove its recipient - or render them unable to tame the excesses of such devotion.

It was that first day that stood out sharply from all the others – Caradoc Miletianus presenting them with the deeds of the land and a certain amount of gold. Caradoc had once mocked her for being an upstart peasant girl. He had been raised to rule and she had been raised to herd pigs; her magic would never equal his own. It was not that same, proud Caradoc who gave them the church, who came down to the land that day, but a broken man. A man who retreated, once he was done, bowed down heavily by some invisible weight. A terrified man, Helga thought. Only fear weighed men down and twisted their faces with ugly shadows.

Perhaps it was guilt. Perhaps it was something else entirely. Pride, or the pricking of a conscience mindful of the rumours that even Rome had heard of her good work - and Caradoc lived in fear of Rome, at least, if nothing else.

Or else, perhaps like her, the fires preyed on his mind. He had gone a-burning in Europe with a man called Mulciber and a great grandson of that straw-haired Saxon traitor. Nisien had preferred to shun those stories; easily eluding the questions that his classmates would throw at him about the heroic deeds of his father, but with a dark and troubled look in his eyes. Arawn Miletianus had held them dear. In time they went to him for the stories. His eyes shone feverishly as he recited those stories and made wild speeches about the wrath of God and fire and brimstone - and that was what the children had wanted.

It was Arawn and not Nisien who would tell her she was a fool for building a church that would save the forest folk.

Salvation was the province of the chosen, he told her, of those who knew what it meant to be children of God.

Salvation was for everyone, she answered, not to be dispensed at the whims of man.

Sanctuary went to those who deserved it, who were truly in need.

“And are you God, Arawn Miletianus?” She had asked him in return, “Or has he deemed you his judge; his Accuser, to determine who does and does not deserve salvation or refuge? To determine who is needy and who is not? Are you a sinless man, to visit judgement on everyone else? Or if you would play Accuser - the devil himself?”

Arawn had stormed away. Nisien apologized as he always did. They continued their building. Neither Caradoc nor Arawn returned to watch the proceedings and Helga wondered how any man could hate life so much - or live so deeply mired in the fear of death and sin that life and the things that gave life became repugnant to him.

* * *

Salazar was the oldest; the oldest of them and her oldest friend. It was he who had taught her how to shape her magic. He had been merely a cynic when she befriended him, not the crank of later years - the man who would deliver an ultimatum: they could have the children or they could have him.

Helga chose the children.

He had only laughed at her when she first told him her idea. Like Rowena he despised most people and thought them all fools and even worse, in his opinion, unambitious fools. He had laughed, the same way he had laughed when she left London for home. Only fools believed in grand ideas and played their parts by rules written by other men and Helga was most certainly a fool.

She was a fool with her school. A fool for opening the doors of her house to all. A fool for talking of sleeping dragons as though _she_ knew what rage was. A fool for choosing a badger, a humble creature of the earth. A fool for choosing black and gold - as though it mattered that man triumphed despite the darkness inside him, that man triumphed by the grace of God, that good lived inside each man if only he listened to the whisperings of God and the spirit over the whisperings of the flesh and the devil. A fool for choosing loyalty, hard work and kindness over all the other virtues. A fool, a fool, a fool, a fool. An idealistic fool, chasing pipe dreams and grand ideas over the tangible present. God over Mammon, heavenly riches over earthly ones, over glory and fame and everything else. An idealistic fool, content to _creep_ along the ground and bury into the earth, as though that would make her part of the bones of the earth.

Ironic then, that he would one day become the very he thing he so despised: an idealistic fool - and then a paranoid old crank.

Salazar followed. Salazar followed her. Not Godric or Rowena, who were people more to his liking, fashioned according to the men he envisioned in his mind; bright, sharp and flying dangerously close to the sun. Salazar Slytherin followed Helga Hufflepuff and sometimes she wondered if it was not because Salazar Slytherin envied something about her: her ambitions were grander than his and so much more hubristic than his. Only a _god_ would dare to dream of perfection, but Helga was a peasant and with peasant girl-humbleness placed these ambitions and dreams at the feet of a higher power.

It must have angered him; that she could dream and yet remain untouched and unsullied by the darkness that he had given himself over to.

Salazar left, when it became clear that they would not bow to his vision. That _they_ would not _bow_ to him or to _his_ better judgement. Helga wondered, often, what it did to his pride to see that they would always choose children and a vision over _him_ and _his_ wisdom. He became a recluse soon after and all that remained of him were a couple of tracts and ideas that were no more than the paranoid ramblings of a fool. Nothing remained of Salazar Slytherin, the fiercely brilliant man who could be charming - _devastatingly_ charming as all three of them had known at different times - if he wanted to. Nothing remained of the wizard they had all once been dazzled by and if they were entirely honest with themselves, a little bit in love with; just an old man, poisoned by his own thoughts and deeds and above all, his love for himself.

Helga had only shook her head in sorrow when he turned to go. Somewhere, she supposed, she must have hoped that he too could have been saved. That it was not too late for him to have turned himself away from hatred and darkness and instead, chosen to focus on the light and the good within people. That it was not too late for his sins to be forgiven. That her prayers for him were not in vain.

He would have mocked her for that.

* * *

Out of the four of them, no one would have ever supposed that it was Helga Hufflepuff who would meet her death first and not, that too, on the sickbed or of old age, but a violent and bloody death. Godric would call it a martyrdom. A decade later, Rome would agree and Helga Hufflepuff would be made a saint and churches and shrines would be built to her across the country in places where she had only the most inconsequential of associations. There would be statues and stain-glass paintings, tapestries and frescoes. She would be painted as a saintly mother figure, she would be painted dying, she would be painted healing the poor. There would be no end to the number of poses and people who would pose as her in those paintings as a way of affixing their names to her: Selwyns, Smiths, Miletianii, Cadwalladers, Bones’, Diggorys – on and on it went. There wasn’t a single family from the west country who hadn’t claimed to be descended from her in one way or the other.

In many ways, she was the one to get what Salazar Slytherin had craved all his life. Fame. Adoration. Devotees.

It was odd, because Godric and Rowena would have never thought that out of the four of them, it would be Helga’s ambitions that would lead to her death. Of all of them, they had thought it would be Salazar who met a violent end through his activities. It was Salazar, after all, who dabbled in the Dark Arts and had given himself over completely to a life of hatred and hatred, as they all knew, inevitably birthed violence. Even Godric or Rowena may not have been entirely unexpected. Rowena’s travels and her search for knowledge frequently took her to dangerous places. And Godric - Godric was simply Salazar inverted; just as bent on dividing the world into discrete categories upon which he could wreak his judgement, just as restless and if not ambitious and selfish, then dangerously brave and dangerously selfless.

But no, it was Helga the Gentle, Helga the Good, Helga the Kind who was murdered violently for standing up to a man.

* * *

Helga merely bowed her head when the blow was struck – plunging much deeper than the wound that sent her to the grave, because of the person wielding the weapon. She had lived a good, full life and she had done what she had set out to do. There was nothing to bind her to this world. There was no more left for her to do.

There was only peace in her heart and a stillness of spirit that could only be divine when she finally breathed her last.

* * *

It was the church that proved to be the sticking point, in the end.

Nisien was murdered, along with his riding party, as they rode through the woods towards the town of Caerfyrddin. Whatever it was that had killed them was not content with merely claiming their lives to dissipate the wrath of the forests. It had placed their heads on spikes along the walls of the town, as a warning. _Come no further, or the woods will devour you_. _Come no further, and we will spare you_.

Not a single soul thought of appeasing the forest folk, or releasing the elves they had enslaved. Maybe if they had been given time. If they had pondered, as sailors in a storm, what sin it was they had committed that had caused such judgement to be visited upon them, they might have thought of it. Maybe. That is a tale that will remain unwritten and undone.

Instead, Arawn Miletianus strode out into the morning and made a thunderous speech to a terrified mob. Arawn Miletianus’ words worked magic and fear was turned into anger and that anger was pointed towards the trees. Arawn Miletianus stood there, eyes flashing and his hair shining gold in the morning light, untethered and set adrift by the death of Nisien and there was nothing that could calm him except blood. There would be justice for Nisien’s death and Arawn Miletianus had appointed himself judge.

The second burning began that very evening in the forests of south Wales.

The dryads and the fair folk fled as armies of wizards smoked them out of their homes and then set them to the sword. Some found refuge in the sea; a slow but certain and gentle death. Some found peace in taking their lives by their own hands and depriving the wizards of the joy of butchering them. Others managed to flee to Europe and from there disappeared into the forests of the northern wilds of Russia and Scandinavia.

Others fled to Helga’s church and claimed sanctuary.

Once Caerfyrddin had been purged, it was only natural that Arawn turned to the east and set out for Helga’s church, with a fierce determination in his stride and such burning fury in his eyes that none dared stand in his path.

None, that is, till he reached Pen Rhionydd and stood before the doors of the church, gazing down into the fiercely determined eyes of Helga Hufflepuff.

* * *

He called her a fool.

Salazar Slytherin had called her a fool many times. Such insults had no power over her anymore.

He commanded her to step aside and let him through. His brother had been killed - killed by fools like her who talked of Christian charity and Christian goodness and all the while nursed these snakes in their bosoms.

Helga knew a thing or two about snakes in bosoms. They did not look like dryad women fleeing with young dryad-children in their arms, or fae folk collapsing across the lintels of the church, burnt and destroyed by iron and rowan. Snakes did not show fear, or collapse at the feet of people and beg for mercy. Snakes hissed and poisoned even when raised in bosoms. Snakes _destroyed_. Snakes loved nothing but themselves.

He begged her, by the memory of his brother. He begged her, for the sake of justice. He begged her for the sake of the wizarding world and her Christian duty towards the children of God, first, and the children of the world, second, but never to things that were not human and therefore, outside the kingdom of God.

Helga told him, in return, that he had failed to truly understand his brother if he imagined that Nisien would have wanted justice exacted by wanton burning and bloody butchery.

He implored her, for the sake of an old student and the virtues she had taught him and his brother: justice, goodness, loyalty.

Arawn did not understand why her eyes turned dark and troubled when he said that. He could not have known, then, that she understood that the words she had spoken to Godric Gryffindor all those years earlier on the night Arawn had been sorted into her house had now come true and Arawn’s violent passions now reached wild and far, unfettered and untamed by Nisien’s good sense.

“No,” she told him, “You are not God, Arawn Miletianus, and I will not let you shed blood on holy ground, or let you violate the sanctity of His church for your revenge.”

“What would you have me do, then?” he cried in anger, “Turn the other cheek?”

“For ten years I taught you,” she answered, “In your heart of hearts, Arawn, I believe you know the answer to your question.”

“Be careful,” she warned him, “Be careful what you choose. Do not let your wrath consume you and poison you.”

Pen Rhionydd was burning and the bells of Helga’s church were ringing the alarm - _invaders! attackers! arm yourselves!_ \- high above them. Arawn Miletianus, his face half hidden in shadows and half lit by the distant and dim red glow of the fires of Pen Rhionydd, looked both like the young boy she had once known and a dangerous man she barely knew. It was as though he was standing there poised before the gates of Hell itself, hand on its doors, debating whether or not he dared enter. Lucifer himself might have looked the same way in the few moments before his fall from heaven, as he teetered between the angel he was and the devil he could be.

“You fool,” said Arawn, and then, “How could I have been so blind?”

He was in a rage now, his eyes glittering wildly in the fire and his face a deadly and furious white. A moment later he began to speak again; at first in a snake’s hiss which then crescendoed into a roar and then an inhuman shrieking.

“You cold, cold, heartless devil - you _liar_ \- you devil’s _whore_ , preaching love and loyalty and justice; now luring me to disloyalty and injustice and hatred, to show mercy to animals as though they are _bound_ by the laws of men and the children of God, to show mercy to these _abominations_ , who worship the old and pagan gods and think nothing of butchering and murdering on their whim - you _demonness_ -”

“No, Arawn,” said Helga softly, “That is your own flesh.”

Arawn threw his head back and laughed.

“My flesh,” he said, “My flesh is sound, my flesh knows the spirit of God and his holiness and knows how you, _you_ have defiled this place -”

“Arawn,” she said, gently, “Arawn, my child, stay your feet from this path. Do not give in. Do not do, in haste, an act you will regret when you are old.”

Arawn stood back and drew his wand.

Helga Hufflepuff watched him teeter there on that precipice, between innocence and the fall - Adam hesitating before he ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Satan in his vanity considering himself against the figure of God: all three, enamoured of their own selves and intoxicated by the thought of playing God over all creation.

"Arawn," she said with urgency, "Arawn, my son, do not speak the word. There will be no turning back."

He bared his teeth and then, in a voice no louder than a whisper he spoke the words.

Helga watched, not him, but Lucifer cast out from the heavens: falling down, down from the highest heavens, turning from the most beautiful and the cleverest of the angels in heaven to a twisted and poisoned being fed by hate - hate of God, hate of man, hate of everything. And then she was seeing Arawn again, irrevocably changed by the words he had spoken. Harsh and ugly lines now took the place of his once boyish innocence, his boyish _rage_. No more red hot heat and fervour. Only a dangerous cold that would now forever be sealed in place and etched deeper and deeper into his skin as each act of murder began to sit more easily in his flesh.

And the little light of incomprehension flickered and then went out entirely from his eyes as he finally understood.

“God forgive him,” she whispered in Latin, between the third and the fifth syllables of the spell.

 _Avada Kedavra_.

* * *

They found her lying on the steps of the church, her blood seeping into the steps of the church. The murderer would never be found, though they all whispered his name. Caradoc Miletianus called them all fools and told them to look inside the church for their answers. Neither Hywel nor Godric mentioned the faint greenish light that hung about Helga’s corpse; whoever had cast the curse must have also stabbed her over and over again. What damage could have been done was already done. Helga had died, Arawn had disappeared and the church was empty.

Europe burnt for the next ten years and when the burning was over, Rome made Helga Hufflepuff a saint.

Caradoc Miletianus did not fight when Hywel Hufflepuff and Godric Gryffindor insisted that the church hold true to Helga Hufflepuff’s original vision: a sanctuary for the lost, the unwanted, the persecuted and all those who had no homes - whether they were driven from them or had never been lucky to ever possess one. He simply locked himself in his room and slowly withered away, tormented by the loss of his sons and whatever burden it was that he had chosen to bear.

Salazar mocked her, even in death. _Dead by her own follies_ , he said.

He did not understand, as Godric and then later, Rowena, would, that it was never about what one man or woman could achieve; but a _people_. He _could_ not understand. He would have fumbled, had he known that Helga had died with only peace and the certainty of a life well-lived (and sadness and great compassion for the young man who had now marred his soul) in her heart. Laughed, because he could not understand and then laughed doubly because he could not see how despite everything, goodness still triumphed.

How it must have angered him, then, that out of all them, it was Helga who was sainted and given the recognition that he so craved. Her name might have been forgotten eventually but while he was forever to be remembered for the deep wounds his ideas inflicted on the wizarding world - for bringing it nearly to destruction - she would be remembered for healing and kindness and for building the wizarding world.

The school thrived. Both Godric and Rowena strived as hard as they could to undo the damage their pride had wrought. Centuries later the hat, once so carefully enchanted with Godric and perhaps even then, sensing that its creator had begun to understand what Hufflepuff had meant by a world united, would call for the students of the school to stand united against evil; to be wise and brave and loyal and ambitious, but never blindly and never for their own sakes.

The church thrived too, in its own way. It served in turns as saviour and refuge, sanctuary and protector to the people of Pen Rhionydd and anyone who came there to claim sanctuary. War after war it withstood and saved many: muggles and wizards and magical creatures alike, as long as their hearts did not contemplate evil. Kings came and went and some tried to tear it down, or strip it of all that it had, but they could not touch it. It would even prove one of the last safe places, centuries later, when Salazar’s legacy was finally in its death throes - lashing out wildly and bringing magical Britain very nearly to its knees. Its pews may have gone empty, but its spirit remained; and through that, the memory of Helga Hufflepuff. Helga the Gentle. Helga the Brave. Saint Helga the Kind.

* * *

She was, at her heart, an ordinary girl. She felt, like others did, the weariness that seeing evil brought to a person’s soul. Perhaps the only extraordinary thing about her was how very much like a rock in a stormy sea, how very much a part of the land she was. There was strength in roots and being firmly rooted. Only then could one possibly stand and persevere. It was easy to be swayed, otherwise, unless like Godric, the sword cleaved through the darkness for you and shone the light forwards.

It was not as though Helga did not understand the insults that were thrown at her, or the sheer evil that men were capable of. It was that she believed, _despite_ everything, that there was good because there _was_ good and it was no good ignoring it to gaze upon only the bad and render it insurmountable and impossible in one’s imagination. It was not as though she never felt weak, but that she fought hard to preserve her gentle spirit against the poison that was so easy to drink - the same poison that Salazar kept drinking of. It was only that she stood firm in the few things she believed in: a God who was fundamentally good and men who were good too because they were made in the image of God - they merely needed reminding of that fact. It was only that she _made_ herself a rock, in the middle of a roiling sea, that she dug her roots down deep into the earth and refused to be moved that kept her firmly set on her path.

It was no accident, that her greatest legacies were a school and a church: ancient stone buildings that stood their ground firmly against kings and wars and time itself, founded on a single idea and a single principle; the same idea and principle that gave her all her names: Kind, Good, Brave and Gentle.  Ancient stone buildings that were solid stone outside so that they could protect something delicate and precious on the inside.

In the end, it did not matter, very much, whether or not her _name_ lived on. It did, undoubtedly, though it was remembered by only a few. Her legacy shaped the future of magical Britain for the better where it shone through the strongest.

In the end it did not matter whether people remembered her at all. She was only a pig-herdess, a peasant girl from a tiny village in Wales who by some strange twist of fortune was chosen and given the opportunity to do what she could for wizarding kind. If, in the end, people lived kindly through her influence – direct or indirect – then that was all that mattered. That was her purpose fulfilled.

In the end it did not matter very much because Helga Hufflepuff was content to be an ordinary girl, chosen and gifted for an extraordinary purpose that one day, others would share in as well.

 

**Author's Note:**

>  **Disclaimer:** I am not Catholic; all I know about Catholicism is derived entirely from history lessons on the Reformation and patchy history lessons here and there. If there is anything wildly inaccurate in here, please forgive me and put it down to artistic license.
> 
> Pen Rhionydd being the home of Helga Hufflepuff is a headcanon of [EssayOfThoughts](archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts), as is the name Grove Hollow for Godric's Hollow.
> 
> The story of Arawn Miletianus is written in more detail [over here](http://thepostmodernpottercompendium.tumblr.com/post/113555633456/myths-on-magic-arawn-miletianus-revenge-from).


End file.
